News Archive 2012

On Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012, Park Geun-hye was elected South Korea's new president, making her the first woman to hold the title. Lyle Goldstein, International Relations program visiting faculty and associate professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute of the U.S. Naval War College, comments on what Park's election means for the future of South Korea and the country's relationship with the United States and China.

Sue Eckert, senior fellow at the Watson Institute, presented a new update of the "Watson Report" at an event co-hosted by the German Ambassador to the United Nations and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The side event — "Targeted sanctions, human rights and due process - The future of the Ombudsperson's mandate under the 1267/1989 Al Qaeda sanctions regime" — took place on December 4th in New York.

Keith Brown, who is currently a Fulbright Scholar in Skopje, capital city of the Republic of Macedonia, was recently interviewed in one of the country's leading weekly news magazines. He answered questions about his long-time interest in Macedonian history, his current research into Macedonia's democratic transition, and his impressions of the current phenomenon of "antiquization," which is reshaping Skopje's urban and political landscape.

Richard Locke has been appointed director of the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. Currently deputy dean of the Sloan School of Management and head of the political science department at MIT, Locke will begin his new duties at the Watson Institute in July 2013.

This Institute-produced video captures the thoughtful energy of this year's Botín Scholars program, which kicks off at Brown each fall. The intensive two-month program brings together 40 university students from eight Latin American countries and Puerto Rico to participate in workshops and seminars geared to public service and leadership. The students spend the remainder of the program in Spain.

"Nas al-Ghiwan is known as the Beatles of Morocco, the Rolling Stones of Morocco, the Bob Dylans of Morocco," explains Elias Muhanna, professor in the Institute-housed Middle East Studies Program. Speaking to a reporter from PRI's America Abroad, a radio program on international affairs, Muhanna detailed the band's multigenerational appeal, stretching back to the tumultuous 1970s. Listen to the story here.

Syrian novelist and playwright Nihad Sirees, fellow at the International Writers Project at Brown, is in part-time residence at the Institute this semester. The Watson Institute has resumed its partnership with the Project, which offers artistic and institutional support to writers who are unable to practice free expression in their home countries.

Pa Ousman Jarju, lead organizer of the world's 48 "Least Developed Countries" (LDCs) in the UN climate negotiations, called for climate action from President Obama in an open letter posted in the Guardian today. Jarju's letter cites research by the Climate Development Lab at Brown, an Institute-supported group that has assisted the LDCs throughout the negotiations. The animation above was produced by the Institute to outline the climate inequalities surfaced by the Lab's research.

Patrick Heller observes the "creative tension" between political and civil society in today's Indian Express, India's leading English-language daily. Noting several weeks of increasingly dramatic conflict between the activist group India Against Corruption (IAC) and the political establishment, Heller warns against giving up on civil society as a critical component of democracy. [Above: Anti-corruption activist Arvind Kejriwal at a press conference in New Delhi last month. European Pressphoto Agency]

Peter Andreas authored an article in the latest edition of the Spanish-language Foreign Affairs Latinoamérica. The piece, titled "De la Revolución estadounidense a la guerra contra el narcotráfico en México," describes the surprising similarities between Mexico today and pre-Revolution America. It is drawn from Professor Andreas' forthcoming book Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, available from Oxford University Press in February. [Above: Burning of the British customs schooner Gaspee in Narragansett Bay, 1772.]

Writer Rana Dasgupta led the fourth meeting of the Brown-India Seminar, giving a talk drawn from research for his forthcoming book on Delhi. The lecture, titled "Intimations of Futurity: Delhi, New Elites and the World," sketched the psychological and social effects wrought by the massive influx of wealth on India's capital over the past two decades.

Keith Brown, professor (research) at the Institute, is currently working in Skopje, the capital of the Republic of Macedonia, to collect new oral histories and analyze the politics of dissidence in the country. Professor Brown, whose fieldwork this semester is supported by a Fulbright US Scholar grant, will give a series of presentations on the subject over the coming months.

Patrick Heller, professor of international studies and sociology, spoke to the New Delhi-based news network ZeeNews about managing sustainable development in India's capital city. "The future of Delhi as an urban, metropolitan city is bright, but the biggest challenge is that of inclusive growth as almost 65 percent of Delhiites who live in slums have no rights," Heller said. This challenge is not limited to Delhi, he added, pointing out that half of India will be urbanized by 2030. Professor Heller is currently a visiting senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi.

In his new book, Enemies: A History of the FBI, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Tim Weiner narrates the history of one of America's most secretive intelligence agencies, including the major players and events that formed their tactics and ethics. Weiner spoke about Enemies at the Institute on October 16 as part of its Global Security Seminar Series.